>From Marcus: >one must ask the fundamental question: what's >the SI unit that we should use to depict measured >values of the order of magnitude of thousands of >kilograms? Perhaps, to be politically correct, one >would want to stick to 'thousands of kilograms'!!... >However, if we have prefixes why should we and not >use a one that would be suitable like the M?
Because, as I am trying to say, 99.9% of people in the U.S. will not understand. One year ago, I would have had very little idea of what one million grams is, but I would have understood that a metric ton is probably about the same thing as the ton I was used to hearing (the short ton). >> 4) normally people will think that Mg >>is the same thing as mg, having never seen the first but having seen the >>second many times. >I respectfully disagree, Carl, there clearly is a >MAJOR distinction between a mg and a Mg, one is a >billion times smaller than the other. There should >be no chance for confusion here. Sigh. Please try to pay attention to what I am actually saying. Marcus, since almost no one in the U.S. has seen Mg as meaning one million grams, they will assume it is the same thing as mg, which they *have* seen. They may have even seen someone write 'milligram' as 'Mg'. Just because you have an idealistic vision of what people *should* understand, the fact remains that few people actually do understand that. Therefore, writing that has 'Mg' will not make sense to very many people. People will be very confused if they see megagrams, and it will only hurt metrication to make people confused about it. People will not stop using tons in conversation and writing, especially for a dubious 'improvement' of using multiples of grams. Instead of trying to take a position that 0.001% of the public will understand and agree with, lets take one that actually can work (and has in many countries). Carl
